smudges and scribbles about God(ing)

Povery, Grace, and Faith (part 1)

I’ve been thinking a lot about poverty and the responses I hear from time to time in my work as a professor and in my life as a member of the trying-to-be-faithful community of Jesus’ followers.

Two responses from students over the past few years have made quite an impact on me. Both were very honest statements, but both troubled me deeply. In responses to study abroad trips I led to Latin America, I received responses I hadn’t anticipated (this often happens!)

The first: the student told us (the class) and me (the prof) that for years s/he had desired to work among the poor and to be an advocate for them, living with them. However, as a result of our trip and after having actually spent time with people who were poor (not the most desperately poor, I might add), s/he concluded there was no way s/he could do it. How could they live the way they do? How could they dress, act, smell, the way they do? And why do they beg and ask me for money?

S/he confessed to feeling shocked and horrified by his/her reactions. Nevertheless, they were real responses, very honest, and I have no doubt that this student returned home having learned something about the world and about his/her own self that was quite unexpected…and troubling.

Secondly, another student, after returning from a study abroad trip I led, came to the conclusion that in the face of poverty and the “underdevelopedness” we saw, s/he was ” glad to be an American” where we enjoy certain physical comforts and social benefits.

Again, this was some honest reflection, but not what I would have hoped.

Two initial comments: first, neither of these students is a bafoon. Both are intelligent, thoughtful adults, both well into middle-age. Secondly, I’m glad I teach at a seminary where there is not as much peer pressure to appear pious and holy as there is in other settings. It is not institutionally dangerous for a student (or a faculty member, although a little more here) to say, “I don’t believe that just because it is in the Creeds,” or to conclude that they struggle to do what they think they’re supposed to do.

The first student’s response has caused me to think about how even the very good hearted among us often regard persons as categories (I’ve been helped here by Jeorg Reiger’s challenging book, Remember the Poor). No one wants to say out loud, “I don’t care about the poor.” Of course not. Of course we “care about the poor.” However, the social realities of many of our lives is such that most of us don’t know the name of a single person who is, in fact, poor. The poor people are: “the poor.” They are not, my friend, Dania, or even, my enemy, that nameless kid who held a pistol to my head in Cuernavaca. They are abstractions and, as such, they do not really exist.

When faced with the real opportunity to touch humanity as a person with a face and a name, the terms of the experience change dramatically. There are no longer “the gays and lesbians,” for example, but rather, my friend David and his spouse, Jeff. They are not abstractions. All those who are so easily and quickly reduced to non-existence spring to life.

However, from time to time, when we actually meet a real person who concretizes a category for us we are not always prepared. They are not saints–sometimes they are not even nice. They are people. Sometimes we like them and sometimes we don’t. But who can ever be prepared for an ideal to materialize? A romanticized (positively or negatively) vision will rarely disappoint, if we can keep it as a vision.

Many of us, for example, are unprepared for the latent racism that simmers and swells from time to time within us–and I’m not talking about “those bigoted folk.” I’m talking about those of us who, on a good day, believe we are shining examples of evolving humanity!

What do we do with this when it comes?

Of course, the easiest thing to do…and potentially the most visibly pious thing to do, is to support “the poor.” Preach/speak/teach about the value of “the poor,” “the oppressed,” “the widows and orphans,” etc., and even make them the objects and recipients of our charity and financial generosity. But for God’s sake, don’t get close.

A couple years ago a speaker came to our seminaries and spoke eloquently and inspiringly about the work his congregation was doing in the greater Washington, DC area in lobbying congress on behalf of the rights of Latino immigrants. But my level of impressedness sunk to UNimpressedness after I heard this pastor’s response to my question. I asked, is anyone in your congregation learning Spanish (or does anyone already speak Spanish) and how much direct contact does the congregation have with the Latino community? Nada.

The second student’s response has also given me much to think about.

Why was I disappointed with the “I’m glad to be an American” response? Am I hoping my American students will be ashamed of their citzenship and consider renouncing it? Do I hope they’ll be indifferent? I wonder about this about about my motivations, but I don’t believe it is shame or indifference that I’m after. However, some reflection is in order. Is it really so simple as “God has blessed us?” (we’re rightly hesitant to finish what could be a complete thought: “…and has not blessed them.”)

I’m not an economist, but have a friend who is so I’m hesitant to play in the backyard of a discipline about which I know very little. Nevertheless, a simple meditation on what is required to have some of the things which I enjoy as an American ought to give me pause.

As I write, there is still a hemorrhaging oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico which is not only threatening US coasts, but also coasts in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz. The image of this pipe is, for me, a profane modern Crucifix. “The pipe is bleeding for you and for me. ” It is, in all the terms appropriate to some theologies, an offering for me on behalf of my actions.

I realize full well that staring into the face of poverty is painful, particularly when one meditates on the possibility of being complicit in its existence.

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4 Responses

Such responses from students, at any age, are disappointing, but not unusual. When I taught Sociology, Anthropology, and Ethnic Studies at the university-level I often encountered students that appeared incapable of feeling empathy for their sisters and brothers. I felt that without creating empathy between themselves and their “family,” they were “othering” people. Furthermore, empathy is not only being able to “understand and enter into another’s feelings,” but a “bonding” and “acceptance” or our sisters and brothers as “family.” I found it quite difficult to enable such students to develop the sense of empathy that would form itself into bonding and understanding. You cannot bond if you cannot understand.

Therefore, I challenged students with teachings and examples. I worked students through the realities of their sisters’ and brothers’ experiences and sent students to engage in fieldwork that might bring these experiences to light within their hearts and begin their bonding with their sisters and brothers. Often, I found students examined their own personal experiences and understandings more than the experiences of their sisters and brothers and this resulted in students grasping what they previously did not understand. Students had to understand their paradigms, perspectives, biases, fears, and selves before they could seek, and bond with, their sisters and brothers. Know yourself and you can know your sisters and brothers.

Students ask “Why do THEY live that way?” “Why do THEY act in such a manner?” “Why don’t they do (such and such) to resolve THEIR problems?” Such students do not understand THEY are US. THEY are family. We can work with students and teach them about why our sisters and brothers live in poverty, the lack of choices available, the system of oppression which keeps our sisters and brothers down, etc. Sometimes, the educational process is effective, sometimes not. First and foremost, we must teach our students that “being an advocate” for people who have not requested advocacy is arrogant. We can “work with” our sisters and brothers, but we cannot “advocate” for them. They understand the truths and realities of their position which we can never fully realize. We can only act in faith, grace, bonding, and acceptance.

Should someone be proud to be American? Speaking from a Wilburite view, I see no nationalities or no national borders. I also have no belief in patriotism or pride. I see only my sisters and brothers from my family that I am eternally bonded with. God created one people. What humans have created (social constructions such as nations, nationalities, etc) should not interfere with God’s creations.

The people are not only the financially poor, but all people. The people “are” the poor because we are all poor. We all lack something. We all need connections to family and the Creator. Perhaps we need to rid ourselves of the labeling system (rich, poor, gay, straight, etc.), but this is difficult because people need to express their lived realities. However, we need to begin with the basis we are one family and need to care for (and “work with”) our family members while being aware of the labels our sisters and brothers may use to refer to their lived experiences.

Finally, “Is there a house Jesus will not enter?” “Is there a person Jesus will not openly converse with?” “Is there a person without the Inner Light?” “Is there a person Jesus will not embrace?” If Jesus is our example, “Then how can we discriminate in our actions, feelings, and acceptance?”

Each of us has our biases and will always be bias-laden, but we can live beyond those biases if we examine our hearts.

I am no expert on dealing with racism, poverty and the economy. But I can work with these issues on the person to person level. I cannot solve US issues concerning race, but my best fishing buddy is Terrance Rainbow. We are of different races. That is not the basis of our friendship. Our friendship is based upon shared experiences, family fellowship, sharing our spiritual successes and failures, and of course fishing! Terrance is a human being, a man. He is my friend. We treat one another with love and respect. He is not the representitive of his race and I am not the rep of my race. We are friends. I admire him for his integrity, work ethic, sense of humor and the joy of life in him. I probably mess the whole race relations thing up, but I do not mess up my friendship.

The questions and concepts you present are complex. There are no real answers to your inquiries but there are faces, faces to put with names. Those names and faces tell stories of life..the good…the bad…and the ugly, so to speak. Through those stories there is remembrance of what it means to be human. Its not something that can be glorified for God and the greater good. Sometimes it comes as cold water splashed in the face of an unsuspecting passerby. Then there is no shield, no barrier, between what is and what it looks like.

Once being a student at a seminary I can tell you that there is definitely peer pressure to appear holy (at least it certainly felt that way). If one did not live up to the standards (non-academic) one may not be allowed to graduate. One’s theology must be sound and the “For All Who Minister” book known inside and out. Every bit of one’s being felt as though it was criticized.

It did not always feel safe to profess ideas or concepts that went against mainline Protestant Christianity. I would say it was a dangerous place to believe things that were different from what the church had been telling people for years. When I work face to face along side humans on a daily basis I realized that there were many things in my graduate career were not helpful when it comes to humanity.

People do not want to hear things that have been rehearsed and memorized. People want to be heard and to have someone be with them; To walk with them. Its about humans being able to be with other humans and see each other in that light; To look into someone’s eyes and see oneself and to see what we all have in common.

I must say that I was taken back by the examples you presented. It is those types of examples that present an even greater need for cross-cultural trips to exist. It is important for humans to be with other humans in each others worlds, no matter if the culture is under-developed, developed, or somewhere in between and/or beyond.